


your kiss is like a lost ghost

by haipollai



Category: Captain America
Genre: Cosmic Cube, Imaginary Friends made real, M/M, Vague consent issues, handwavey magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:55:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/pseuds/haipollai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky opens his eyes and he is falling. There is a cube of blue just out of his reach and he feels strangely calm. He doesn't know where he is but he has a distinct feeling that this is who he is. Except something is missing. Someone. He looks away from the cube and up to see the plane far above him but lowering fast. Falling. The plane is falling just like him. </p>
<p>He has been falling for a long time. </p>
<p>He hits the water hard, skin still new and raw and ripped to shreds on ice and water. </p>
<p>His world goes black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your kiss is like a lost ghost

**Author's Note:**

> not in chronological order, but all the pieces should be in place by the end.

Bucky opens his eyes and he is falling. There is a cube of blue just out of his reach and he feels strangely calm. He doesn't know where he is but he has a distinct feeling that this is who he is. Except something is missing. Someone. He looks away from the cube and up to see the plane far above him but lowering fast. Falling. The plane is falling just like him. 

He has been falling for a long time. 

He hits the water hard, skin still new and raw and ripped to shreds on ice and water. 

His world goes black. 

\- 

Steve was born to a life of loneliness. His mother died and he drew her over and over to remember her face. There was never anyone else. No one to save him from the bigger boys. Sometimes he wonders why he bothers, why does he fight for everyone else when no one bothers to fight for him. He's tired but he has nothing else. 

His life is a war before Erskine and his serum and Nazis. 

James Buchanan Barnes is created in the middle of the night when Steve is six. His mother has been dead for five months and no one has stepped up to take him. If he even has family still out there. But Steve isn't really surprised. Who would want a boy who will probably die before he's ten. Steve knows how much death hurts so he tells himself this is better. No one else will get hurt. He will die and it will be okay. No one will miss him and he'll get to be with his mother again. 

But no one really likes being alone and so came James Barnes, with his big toothy grin. He's healthy and not scared of anything or anyone. Steve imagines him beating up the bullies in ways tiny Steve Rogers never could.

He tells the sisters once about Bucky when they walk in on Steve talking to him. They beat him and tell him imaginary friends are for the little ones and he is almost seven.

Steve just becomes better at hiding.

-

Bucky is gone for a month. It's different then when Steve told himself that Bucky had just gone to war (and of course Bucky had gone because Steve wouldn't be friends with someone who wouldn't volunteer). This is different because somewhere out there is a real man, he's flesh and blood and everyone else can see him. Natasha loved him. Steve tries not to think about him but lying in bed at night, alone and unable to sleep, he can't think of anything else. Imagining Bucky doesn't feel right anymore. He wishes he never had to explain who James Barnes was. 

There's the sound of someone in his kitchen. Steve considers just lying there, letting whoever it is just rob him, but they don't sound like they're leaving and if anything like they're rummaging through his refrigerator so he gets up to at least investigate.

And Bucky's sitting there at his kitchen table with a beer. He looks small and tired as if he hasn't slept for the entire month he's been gone.

"Wanted coffee but didn't want to wake you." He doesn't look at Steve or lift his head so Steve goes to the coffee pot to get it started. He doesn't turn around to look back at Bucky, not sure he can handle that.

"I didn't know you'd come back."

"It's a lot to take in. I remember everything but you...you made me. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?"

"I know, Buck-" His fingers dig hard enough into the counter to send cracks through the material. "I didn't-"

He's cut off by the sound of the chair scraping against the floor and the soft sounds of Bucky making his way over to Steve. "I know, Steve." His hand touches Steve's shoulder, and it's warm and solid, making Steve jump.

He turns to look at Bucky, wide eyed as it finally sinks in. "You're real. You're really…you're real." Part of him had been sure that he had been imagining this, he couldn't justify any other reason Bucky would show up in his apartment in the middle of the night. But he'd never been able to imagine warmth before. He'd tried so hard but it couldn't compare to the solid hand on his skin. "Bucky," he breaths.

"You want to get to know me? Outside of your own head?"

Steve smiles nervously. "I'd like that a lot."

\- 

The Winter Soldier sleeps with the Black Widow. With her the Winter Soldier falls in love for the first time that he can remember. His handlers punish him and he learns that love comes with pain. 

He starts to dream of a man in red, white and blue. The Winter Soldier knows his name and fear settles in his stomach. He doesn't know where the dreams come from only that he sees an American hero in them. So he hides for as long as possible. Its something new, keeping such a dangerous secret from his handlers but he knows instinctively that he has to. They will take this away from him if they find out. The fear eats away at him. Fear that he's insane, that he's a disappointment.

Fear that he belongs with that man, wherever he is and this life here is the lie.

When they prepare him for cryostasis, he's not particularly surprised. He has failed them and he deserves to be forgotten and pushed aside. He can sleep and the fear will go away if only or a little bit.

-

Bucky takes the couch despite Steve's insistence. He doesn't explain why he stays there at all, but Steve doesn't push. To push might make Bucky change his mind.

Steve sneaks out to watch, just to look at him and remind himself that he's real. The boy he made up, the man he created adventures with, is real and asleep on his couch. Everything exactly like how Steve pictured him each day. Except the arm. Dull grey metal stretched limply across Bucky's body, as if it's normal and supposed to be there. His fingers are stretching out before he can stop himself, just to touch. When Bucky was awake he tried to control himself but the need is there.

Before his fingers reach skin, Bucky's hand closes over him. The metal is slightly warmed by Bucky's own body temperature but still cool. For a second he's tense but then sees it's Steve and relaxes.

"Sorry I-"

"It's okay."

In early morning darkness, the details of Bucky's face are almost invisible but Steve knows them by heart. He's drawn them over and over, closed his eyes and imagined what that face would look like covered in dirt and blood and fresh from a hot bath. He's imagined it inches away from his and the lips on his skin.

Sorry isn't nearly enough. It can't be, not for what Bucky has to live with now because of Steve, all while trying to be his own person. Steve can't look at him, he doesn't know why Bucky lets him touch him.

In the darkness, he can hear Bucky sitting up and feel the warmth of his legs as he swings them over the side of the couch. Somehow Steve has ended up kneeling between his thighs and it would be so _easy_ -

"You made me love you," Bucky whispers. "I want to kiss you and I don't know if it's you or me."

"I- I don't even know how to apologize for this."

"Don't." Bucky rests his forehead against Steve's and suddenly they're sharing space and sharing air. Steve's lived this fantasy countless times, when he could be alone and pretend for a little bit that he wasn't. That someone else out there thought he deserved something good. "I mean, it's fucked up beyond belief. But…" he sighs and his thumb touches Steve's lip.

"But?"

Bucky's terrified, Steve sees it in his eyes and it's a rush, seeing him and having to figure out that Bucky is feeling things, instead of knowing. This is not the man in his head, this is someone new, someone he has to figure out all the pieces too. Something must change in his face because Bucky smiles.

-

The cosmic cube sits just out of his reach. All he would have to do is reach out an arm and touch but something holds him back. He looks up and his eyes meet Steve's, and Steve sees his own panic and confusion echoed back at him.

"You're real," he whispers.

"It's you," the Winter Soldier snarls at the same time, lifting his gun. Somewhere in the distance Sharon yells.

But Steve holds up the cube and _remembers_.

-

Sometimes in the middle of the night with the outside world still hidden behind windows and doors and blinds, he thinks maybe he's going crazy. Gone crazy. Unable to handle the modern world without recreating Bucky Barnes to live it with him.

There is never any magical moment where Bucky senses his angst and wakes up. It doesn't matter that Bucky is a solid weight on top of him and Steve can feel each breath against his skin, or that he can still feel the residual stickiness of Bucky's come. He has imagined in detail before and there is no one else to tell him that Bucky is truly there. There is nothing besides them in their cocoon. Part of him wants it to stay this way, no more villains, nothing but them. Even if he's only crazy and imagining Bucky, it's good. He's happy. It feels like he so rarely gets to be happy.

But the metal arm is there and the scar tissue over his shoulder and back where they joined it to flesh and bone. It's something Steve had never imagined, could ever imagine for Bucky.

-

There is never a magical moment, but Bucky's eyes open and Steve is still with him, separate from him, watching him like he might disappear. This is love and there is still pain, there is still fear, but this is Bucky Barnes' love and he's not the Winter Soldier and he's not Steve Rogers imaginary friend.

"You might have dreamed me up," Bucky whispers. Steve tenses at the reminder but Bucky is nothing but a reminder, a breathing being created of old memories and desperate wishes. It's who he is and he has to accept that or go mad. "But I don't care."

\- 

There is a never a magical moment so Steve leans in and kisses him. Just in case he's a dream. Just in case the cube takes back what it created. He kisses him because there might not be another chance and he needs to know what it truly feels like. He needs to know the taste of Bucky's skin, the way his stomach trembles when Steve scrapes his nails against his skin.

Everything is similar but different. He doesn't have the words to describe what it is actually like. A dream come true, a fantasy. Except it's better than all of that.

Bucky snores and his smile seems to start in the right corner of his lips like a smirk before growing into a smile and he likes to trace Steve's jaw with his fingers while Steve is focused and working. Little quirks Steve never dreamed up, it was too dangerous. The beatings of the sisters, the taunts of the other boys all haunted him too much even as the Bucky in his head grew and changed. "You're him," Steve whispers. "You're him but you're not. You're so much more."

Bucky touches his cheek and lips and nose. "Am I?" He sounds desperate, he needs Steve's reassurance that he is more than the boy he dreamed up.

"You can surprise me."

As if to prove the point, Bucky kisses his smile, his fingers are tight in Steve's hair and some things do not change. So close they breath the same air, pressed so close there's nothing to separate them.

-

Their magical moment was in the cockpit of a plane with Hydra's symbol emblazoned on the side. It was in the moment Steve realized he had no choice but to put the plane into the water and ice. When he realized he would die alone and more than anything he wanted Bucky Barnes, the little boy he had made up so many years ago, to be real. To be a man to stand beside him in these final moments.

It wouldn't be enough but it would be something.

Behind him, the cosmic cube began to glow.


End file.
